In her first memoir, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Caitlin Doughty uses her own experience to examine why Americans oppose conversations about death. While the book may not help you figure out how to talk to your loved ones about death, the author will surely get you get you thinking about it. Laura Leigh Abby has this review.

In this essay, Shaun Randol wonders if, after forty years, John Berger's Marxist take on European oil painting and modern advertising is still relevant, and whether the feminist social critic Camille Paglia has lost her edge.

Perhaps surprisingly, Qanta Ahmed’s religious and familial background does not adequately prepare her for a two-year stint as a doctor in Saudi Arabia. Thus, Ahmed’s memoir is less a fish-out-of-water story, and more like a fish-in-unfamiliar-water tale. Soniah Kamal reviews Ahmed’s mystified encounters of classicism, colorism, and sexism in The Kingdom.